


Life After Life

by Hokuto



Category: Destiny (Video Game)
Genre: Conversations, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 23:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9572126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: On patrol in the Plaguelands, Allison and Sylith-3 take a break to have a serious talk.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have a weakness and it is writing about my ridiculous Guardians having conversations about their Deep Thoughts and I am not sorry.
> 
> ... also I think I might be starting to ship them a little bit oh no.

From the cover of an inactive SIVA cluster, Allison peered down Stillpiercer's scope and across the wind-ruffled inlet to an outcrop of rock jutting from the water. One dreg - no, two of them - patrolling around a squat grey building, a vandal watching the shoreline...

"Wait, wait, I think there's a captain - no, sorry, just a really pointy rock. Whoops," Sylith-3 said. "Sorry. Uh, I count three dregs? No, wait, I think that third one is just some flowers... Weird, I didn't think there were any flowers that color out here."

Allison hissed through her teeth and said, "Will you please use a sniper for recon instead of that damn Multi-Tool?"

They'd met up in the Plaguelands on a tip from Shiro-4 about possible Devil Splicer activity off the coast. Most of the time Allison enjoyed patrols with Sylith - her chatter and endless enthusiasm livened up the dull routine of them a great deal - but sometimes she just had no sense. For example, by refusing to use one of her three perfectly good sniper rifles for reconnaissance.

"I can see just fine," Sylith insisted. "And anyway I'm way better with my MIDA than I am with the snipers. Hey, let's have a contest! You use your sniper and I'll stick with my MIDA and we'll see who gets the most headshots on these guys. Loser has to -"

Through the scope, the vandal tossed something over to one of the dregs, who caught it and waved back with their other hand. The dreg brought the mystery catch up to their jaws - some kind of snack? - and began to chew on it.

Allison yanked Stillpiercer out of the gap she'd set it in and slung it across her back, breathing deeply as she turned away. "Forget it," she said. "Just leave them alone."

"Huh? Why? C'mon, there could be something really great in there, like - like some more Golden Age tech or secret books by the Iron Lords or -"

"There's a cache with thirty glimmer, a handful of spinmetal, and if we're really lucky an engram that you'll turn straight into armor materials, and you know it," Allison said. She leaned back against the cables of dead SIVA and stretched her legs out, then pulled the hood of her cloak tighter to keep out the snow-chilled wind. "I'd rather talk. Just you and me, no Ghosts - sorry, Croaker, Curt."

_Rude_ , Curt grumbled. _We have opinions on these things too, you know._

_Please?_

_Oh, fine. Guess I'll work on that data I pulled out of the Perfection Complex's computers while you were jumping all over the place. But you owe me one!_

"Hey, I got those sweet Dunemarchers out of a rare engram - oh, fine. You're just mad 'cause you suck with scout rifles..." Sylith patted her sleek black MIDA Multi-Tool and cooed something inaudible at it, then hung it on the back of her chestplate and sat cross-legged next to Allison. "So? What's up?"

Allison looked down at her hands. She couldn't remember what her current gloves were called. Why did everything have to have a name? They were just armor, not even one of the exotic pieces that probably did deserve to be called something. "Doesn't it bother you? Killing them, when they can't come back."

"Ugh, really? That's what you want to talk about? You're getting as bad as the Sibyl..." Sylith slouched and kicked her legs out, knocking snow everywhere. "And tell that to freakin' Omnigul. I'm pretty sure Exos aren't supposed to get affected by these things, but my head was splitting after we finished killing her that last time she came back. I _wish_ she'd stay dead, she has a worse voice than those pyramid face sisters."

"I'm being serious."

"You're always being serious."

"I am not." _Just compared to you_. "Aren't you ever bothered by it? We've been out here killing for the City for years now. Doesn't it - get to you?"

It got to her sometimes. Not always. Not the leaders, not Crota or Oryx or Aksis or their like, but the ones she caught day to day: the thrall sniffing at wildflowers in the Cosmodrome with its mouth half-open, the ether-starved Wolf dreg hiding in the rocks of the Giants' Pass on Mars, the two Cabal legionaries head-butting each other as they marched among the towers of Freehold.

They would have ripped out her heart and eaten her Light if they'd caught her. She _knew_ that, and Curt was usually quick to remind her when she hesitated, but when she couldn't sleep - or slept too deeply - they came back to her. In dreams, they fought her tooth and nail; in nightmares they were frozen, still, until her bullets hit and they disintegrated.

(In the worst nightmares, they had green gems shining in their chests. She didn't know what that was about.)

"When you put it like that, it sounds kind of bad if I say not really," Sylith said. "To be fair, though, they're usually shooting at us first and they've killed me a bunch of times, it's not my fault I don't stay dead. And I can't just go up to them and say, 'Hey, if you don't shoot at me I won't shoot at you,' can I? Like, I really wanted to on the Dreadnaught with the Cabal because we all hate the Hive and it seems stupid to me to fight the Hive _and_ the Cabal when we could all be fighting the Hive together on their creepy people chitin ship, but Zavala got really shirty at me when I asked. I still think it's stupid, though. I don't know why the Vanguard are so stubborn about even trying to make some friends, it'd make our lives so much easier and -"

"I know, but forget the Vanguard. Just - how do _you_ feel about it? All the killing?"

"Well, I mean, you don't expect me to feel bad about killing the Hive, right?" Sylith waved her hands in the air. "They've killed literally gazillions of people who never did anything - see, I finally read the whole Books of Sorrow - and also _Wei Ning_ , plus it's like, their religion. I don't get all that quiddity stuff, but basically they're super into death and if I'm strong enough to kill them it's fine, because it proves their sword logic or whatever. Which is kind of shady in a different way, but at least I'm not going all Toland or anything even after we killed Oryx, so maybe it's okay. Maybe. Still not touching Touch of Malice ever again." She kicked up more snow, uncovering the bare sandy ground beneath it. "And the Vex are a hive mind or something, aren't they? So it probably doesn't matter if you kill one because they all remember everything anyway. Plus they jump around in time, I don't know how that works out for them. Although it still feels kind of weird, with me being an Exo, and you know, sometimes it's kind of hurtful when people say stuff about 'just a machine' even if they're not talking about Exos, like, what do you think we are, really?"

"You should probably mention that to someone, then. You could start a whole movement," Allison said. "And what about the Eliksni? The Cabal?"

"Um - well..." Sylith looked around. "Promise you won't tell anyone? Especially not the Sibyl?"

Sylith-3 had actually thought of something that she hadn't immediately blurted out to everyone and the Traveler? It had to be good. "Sure, I promise."

"I mean it, don't you dare tell the Sibyl about this, she'd totally get all over my case." Sylith took another quick peek at the barren landscape, then drew her knees up to her chest and said quietly, "I, um - I think there's an afterlife..."

"You - what?"

"If you laugh I'm gonna throw down a Fist of Havoc right here!"

"I'm not laughing!" Allison said quickly, and took a moment to be glad she never took her helmet off outside the Tower and City. "I'm just - surprised. I didn't think you were the type to believe in that kind of thing."

"Yeah, but it makes sense, doesn't it? All of us Guardians were dead and now we're not, but we're still probably the same people we were before even if we don't remember anything about it, except kind of the Sibyl because she just has to be special, oooooh -" Sylith wiggled her fingers. "- but mostly we don't remember. But we're all still different people, aren't we? Which doesn't really make any sense if we're getting raised from the dead just to be an army, because it'd be way easier to resurrect everyone at once and give them the same personality or morals or something so there wouldn't be arguing and people going off on their own and stuff all the time, we'd be one big happy united front against the Darkness. So there has to be something that's still there even after you die for real the first time, something that Ghosts can call back to be you. And that's why we don't lose our memories every time we die in the Crucible and whatever, too. Right?"

"That's - not a bad argument," Allison said. "I think. I might need a minute to parse out all the qualifiers."

"Right! See, I'm not a total idiot, no matter what Zavala says. And I do think about these things sometimes." Sylith planted one elbow on her knees and rested her chin in her palm, humming. "And I think that if Exos and humans and Awoken have souls and an afterlife, everyone else must, too... Maybe not the Hive because I bet their worms eat their souls or something, and I dunno about the Vex because of the robot thing and the time thing, but I bet the Fallen and the Cabal definitely do. So I figure, once I die permanently I'll probably meet all the guys I killed in the afterlife, and if they're still mad I killed them they can all line up and punch me a couple times, 'cause that seems fair. Except Crota and Oryx, because they had it coming and they know it. Not sure about Skolas, but I guess he can have one punch as long as he says he's sorry about my buddy Variks's arms afterwards..."

"I get the idea." It was absurd, really, but it did have that special Sylith logic that kept winning Allison over against her better judgment. And there probably was a good point or two buried in it somewhere.

"Man - now I said all that out loud, I don't really wanna go over there and explore after all," Sylith said, and she gave a short, sharp buzz. "You want to go to the Dreadnaught instead and maybe clean it up some? I could always use more wormspore."

"Sure," Allison said, stretching her arms. "But first, if you don't mind waiting a few minutes... I thought I'd switch over to Bladedancer and sneak out there without getting the Splicers' attention. Just to make sure we're not missing out on anything big."

"Really? Allie, you're the best!" Sylith threw her arms around Allison and squeezed. "If there's something super cool you get first dibs!"

"Okay, okay, just don't choke me to death before I can even leave..."

It was a long ride out to Saturn; after Allison had stowed the extra spinmetal and put the coordinates in, Curt popped out to sit on her shoulder and said, "You don't believe in all those things she said, do you?"

"I don't know, buddy." She rubbed away a speck of grime that had gotten on the console somehow. "Kind of depends on whether you think you built my personality from scratch when you found me."

"Of course I didn't! I was looking for you, specifically - if you were anyone else, you wouldn't be _my_ Guardian." She felt his prongs droop against her neck. "That - isn't much of an argument against her theory, is it."

"Not really," she said, and she reached over with her other hand to pat him. "It does seem to support our theory that the Traveler cares about us, though, if it's not turning us all into mindless obedient soldiers by bringing us back. I don't even want to know how she came up with that one." Sylith's peculiar reasoning could go to some unexpectedly dark places, sometimes.

"I guess. That doesn't make her any less weird, mind you."

"Oh, I know, but when she has a point, she has a point."

The arc of their route off Earth took them over the City and the Traveler; Allison watched it on the viewscreen as they passed, and when it was out of sight found that she'd put her hand against the screen. As if she could reach out to the Traveler through the vacuum. As if it would reach back to her somehow, transmitting answers written in Light...

"I just don't want you to feel bad about doing what you have to do," Curt said, nudging her shoulder. "And definitely don't let Eliksni ghosts beat you up in the afterlife. I'd never live it down."

"All right."


End file.
